They haven’t worked any harder or prepared any longer or any other corny cliché you’d hope could explain it all away.

“It’s like one domino fell last year, and hit every other one on the way down,” says Auburn center Reese Dismukes. “This year, it’s been the exact opposite — but in a good way.”

And there, in the middle of it all, is Chris Davis: a microcosm of Auburn’s worst-to-first turnaround.

To most, Davis is the guy who became a household name by returning a missed kick for a touchdown in the Iron Bowl. To anyone associated with Auburn, Davis is the soul of a program that won a national championship in 2010, and two years later, was the worst team in the SEC and fired its championship coach.

To those on The Plains, Davis’ never-give-up attitude is what this Auburn team is all about. An overachiever always overshadowed by those bigger, faster and stronger, but never outworked.

He has battled injuries throughout his career, and has struggled to stay on the field because of both injuries and inconsistent play. He is the definition of Auburn’s uphill climb in its own state vs. the mighty Alabama.

“I guess when you look at it like that, maybe it starts to make sense,” Davis said.

How fitting then, near the end of his fifth season at Auburn — when he finally became the player everyone around him hoped he could be — Davis was standing at the line of scrimmage on the field goal block team with one second remaining in the Iron Bowl and Alabama set to attempt a 57-yard field goal.

One timeout, one pause in a season full of the unexpected and unthinkable, changed the course of one team and one player forever. A week earlier, Ricardo Louis finished off the Georgia game with an improbable Hail Mary catch.

A month earlier, Nick Marshall finished off a wild comeback victory at Texas A&M with a masterful drive to beat the No. 7 Aggies and start this idea, this dream, that maybe Auburn really could complete a worst-to-first journey.

A year earlier, the Aggies scored 63 points on Auburn, the most points ever given up by an Auburn team at Jordan-Hare Stadium. A few days later, a group of Auburn fans stood outside the practice field at Auburn and formed a makeshift “Tiger Walk” to support a team that hit a new low.

“Rock bottom,” said Auburn defensive end Dee Ford. “I still don’t understand why it all happened. We had the same team, man. The same players. We worked our tails off in practice. For whatever reason, it just didn’t happen during games.”

So when Auburn coach Gus Malzahn called timeout with one second remaining in his first Iron Bowl and Alabama lining up for what would be a game-winning field goal, who would’ve thought it was anything more than icing a kicker? Then Malzahn moved Davis from kick block to the end zone — just in case the Tide kick was short and returnable.

When he was 2, his father was shot by two men in Birmingham. Twenty years later, the Birmingham City Council, full of both Auburn and Alabama graduates, put aside the rivalry for one day and passed a resolution honoring Davis.

A week later, Malzahn was named Home Depot Coach of the Year, after his team scored the most points in SEC Championship Game history and sealed a spot in the BCS National Championship Game. Eleven months earlier, it was Malzahn who walked into his first team meeting at Auburn and told players they were going to produce “one of the greatest turnarounds in college football history.”

With, essentially, the same team.

Only Marshall, the junior college quarterback who began his career at Georgia — where he was moved to defensive back because the staff didn’t think he could play quarterback — was a significant change from the hapless squad of 2012.

Marshall is a raw but dangerous and first-year starting quarterback. Malzahn, the offensive coordinator at Auburn during the 2010 national championship season, is wrapping up just his second season as a head coach.

None of this makes any sense. Until you watch it all play out on the field week after week.